I’ve spent most of my life looking for the rules. I grew up in an environment where I wasn’t given any guidance at all and came into adulthood desperately seeking a set of parameters. Just looking for somebody to tell me how to play the game.   

I could see others experiencing success. But what boggled me was that when I tried to copy them, I would get different results and just end up more confused and frustrated.  

Then I got angry. I experienced my first coaching conversation, and I learned that there really are no rules. I got seething rageful over this idea because I could not comprehend a world without a black-and-white, well-worn path to follow. If this were true it meant that most of my life was built on sinking sand. I still get uncomfortable thinking about it.  

But what I came to understand is that the life we experience, the success and failure, isn’t really about the stuff we do. What we do is important, but it’s not the most important. What it comes down to is the way we would do the stuff.

You see, when I copied people, I would dutifully check the box and mimic everything they did, but I wasn’t moving with the same attitude. I wasn’t showing up with the same set of intentions and purpose. My mood was different. So, obviously, the people that I interacted with received what I did differently. They responded to me differently, and I got completely different results. Same exact stuff. Different way of doing it.  

This is what’s meant by beingness. If all the stuff we do is coming from a primary desire for efficiency, status, or “hitting the metrics,” then it isn’t flowing from a primary desire for mutual benefit and unconditional positive regard. Others will feel it, and they will resist us.  

So, if your results are off and you know that your technique is best practice, go deep. Pull back some layers and consider, what am I really wanting here? How am I showing up? Who am I being?